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A Superb Article Introducing Hillary
Clinton the War Hawk and Her Neocon Views
From Russian Insider
Alexander Mercouris
Fri, Nov 28 |
We are publishing this long,
thoughtful article by a renowned
journalist and commentator on Russian society and politics in full even though
it contains just one brief paragraph about Russia, not only because the article
is very good, but because it gives the reason why US-Russian relations are now
in crisis.
The article introduces Hillary
Clinton, likely candidate for the Democratic Party for the Presidency in 2016,
and committed hardliner and war hawk.
The great strength of this article
is that it shows that Hillary Clinton’s hard line, maximalist positions on foreign
policy (including Russia) simply represent what has now become the US foreign
policy consensus: that the US is an “exceptional country” and that this gives
the US a right to intervene constantly around the world and to confront anyone
and everyone who it judges poses any sort of challenge to the US.
Since the US thinks of itself as the
“exceptional country” it cannot accept other countries like China and Russia as
“equals” even though the interests of international stability and world peace
require that it do so.
Nor will the US accept that other
country such as China and Russia have a right to interests in places such as
eastern Europe or Central Asia or the east Pacific where this is contrary to
the policies or wishes of the US.
Nor is the US able to see that its
own actions both abroad and to some extent even at home (for example in
relation to human rights policy) have caused it to forfeit whatever claim it
might once have had to moral leadership.
As the article also shows, this
belief in the US as “the exceptional country” has caused one foreign policy
disaster after the other. Neither Hillary Clinton nor the part of the US
establishment that holds these views (which the article significantly
identifies as an “oligarchy”) are however capable of learning from these
disasters because doing so would challenge their belief that the US is an
“exceptional country”.
The result is that they go on
repeating the same mistakes again and again, so that the Middle East is now in
chaos, relations with Russia are now in crisis and an a much greater and far
more dangerous crisis with China in the east Pacific is now only just below the
horizon..
It is this approach to foreign
policy which has brought about the crisis in Ukraine. Instead of working with
Russia to stabilise Ukraine and overcome its divisions – the US has treated
Ukraine as just another piece on its chessboard of relations with Russia - a
country in which for obvious geographic, economic, cultural and historic
reasons has a vital interest in Ukraine.
The result is a collapse in the US’s
relations with Russia and a war inside Ukraine itself.
The one point we would make is that
as the article itself says, the policy that is based on the belief in the US as
“the exceptional country” – with all that that involves – is held by only a
minority of Americans (in our opinion a rapidly shrinking minority). Given the
enormous and growing costs of this policy, it is only a matter of time before
it is challenged within the US itself.
However, as this article also shows,
Hillary Clinton as a paid-up believer in the policy, is not going to be the one
to do it.
This article first appeared in The Nation.
Hillary Clinton is running for
president not only on her record as secretary of state, but also by presenting
herself as tougher than Barack Obama on foreign-policy issues. With this stance, she presumably
plans to distance herself from a president increasingly branded as “weak” in
his approach to international issues, and to appeal to the supposedly more
hawkish instincts of much of the electorate.
It is therefore necessary to ask a
number of related questions, the answers to which are of crucial importance not
just to the likely course of a hypothetical Clinton administration, but to the
future of the United States in the world.
These questions concern her record
as secretary of state and her attitudes, as well as those of the US
foreign-policy and national-security elites as a whole.
They are also linked to an even
deeper and more worrying question: whether the country’s political elites are
still capable of learning from their mistakes and changing their policies
accordingly. I was brought up to believe that this is a key advantage of
democracy over other systems.
But it can’t happen without a public
debate—and hence mass media—founded on rational argument, a respect for facts,
and an insistence that officials take responsibility for evidently disastrous
decisions.
The difficulties that a Democratic
politician must overcome in designing a foreign and security policy capable of
meeting the needs of the age are admittedly legion.
· These include US foreign-policy and national-security
institutions that are bloated beyond measure and spend most of their time
administering themselves and quarreling with one another;
· the weakness of the cabinet system, which encourages these
institutions and means that decisions are constantly thrown in the lap of the
president and a White House staff principally obsessed with the next election;
· an increasing political dysfunction at home, partly as a
result of the unrelenting American electoral cycle;
· a Republican opposition that is positively feral in its
readiness to use any weapon against a Democratic White House;
· a corporate media that, when not working for the Republicans
directly, is all too willing to help turn minor issues into perceived crises;
· and problems in some parts of the world (notably the Middle
East and Afghanistan) that are indeed of a hideous complexity.
Even more important and difficult
than any of these problems may be the fact that designing a truly new and
adequate strategy would require breaking with some fundamental American
myths—myths that have been strengthened by many years of superpower status but
that go back much further, to the very roots of American civic nationalism.
These myths, above all, depict the
United States as—in one of Clinton’s favorite phrases—the “indispensable
nation,” innately good (if sometimes misguided), with the right and duty to
lead humankind and therefore, when necessary, to crush any opposition.
It is the strength and centrality of
these nationalist myths that have prevented our elites and the American public
from learning or remembering the lessons of Vietnam—a failure that helped pave
the way for the disaster of the 2003 Iraq invasion, the consequences of which
are still unfolding in the Middle East today. And as Clinton’s entire
record—all her writings and all the writings about her—show, she has made
herself a captive of those nationalist myths beyond any possibility of escape.
As she asserts in her new book, Hard Choices:
“Everything that I have done and
seen has convinced me that America remains the “indispensable nation.” I am
just as convinced, however, that our leadership is not a birthright. It must be
earned by every generation.
And it will be—so long as we stay true to our values and remember that, before
we are Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, or any of the other
labels that divide us as often as define us, we are Americans, all with a
personal stake in our country.”
It’s the same old nationalist
solipsism: all we have to do is stick together and talk more loudly to
ourselves about how wonderful we are, and the rest of the world will
automatically accept our “leadership.”
This is not a case—as has sometimes
appeared with Obama—of a naturally cool and skeptical intellect forced to bow
to the emotions of the masses. To all appearances, Clinton’s nationalism is a
matter of profound conviction.
And let us be fair: this may help to
get her elected president. Once she is, however, it is likely to constrain
drastically her ability to shape a foreign policy appropriate to the new
circumstances of the United States and the world. Above all, perhaps, it
hampers her ability to learn from the past, and from her own and America’s
mistakes—a defect blazingly on display in her latest memoir.
Instead, even when (on very rare
occasions) she does make the briefest and most formal acknowledgment of a US
crime or error, it is immediately followed by the infamous statement that we
must put this behind us and “move on.” This phrase is dear not only to Clinton,
but to the foreign-policy establishment as a whole. It makes any serious
analysis of the past impossible.
Of course, one hardly looks for
great honesty or candor in what is, in effect, election propaganda—and one must
always keep in mind the presence of a Republican Party and media ready to tear
into even the slightest appearance of “apologizing for America.”
Nonetheless, a passage early in the
book did give me hope that it would contain at least some serious discussion of
past US mistakes and their lessons for future policy. It concerned what Clinton
acknowledges as her own greatest error—the decision to vote for the Iraq War:
“As much as I might have wanted to,
I could never change my vote on Iraq. But I could try to help us learn the
right lessons from that war and apply them to Afghanistan and other challenges
where we had fundamental security interests. I was determined to do exactly
that when facing future hard choices, with more experience, wisdom, skepticism,
and humility.”
Neither in her book nor in her
policy is there even the slightest evidence that she has, in fact, tried to
learn from Iraq beyond the most obvious lesson—the undesirability of US ground
invasions and occupations, which even the Republicans have managed to learn.
For Clinton herself helped to launch
US airpower to topple another regime, this one in Libya—and, as in Iraq, the
results have been anarchy, sectarian conflict and opportunities for Islamist
extremists that have destabilized the entire region. She then helped lead the
United States quite far down the road of doing the same thing in Syria.
Clinton tries to argue in the book
that she took a long, hard look at the Libyan opposition before reporting to
the president her belief that “there was a reasonable chance the rebels would
turn out to be credible partners”—but however long she looked, it is now
obvious that she got it wrong.
She has simply not understood the
fragility of states—states, not regimes—in many parts of the world, the risk
that “humanitarian intervention” will bring about state collapse, and the
inadequacy of a crude and simplistic version of democracy promotion as a basis
for state reconstruction.
It does not help that the US record
on democracy promotion and the rule of law – including Clinton’s own record –
is so spotted that very few people outside the country take it seriously
anymore.
Her book manages simultaneously to
repeat the claim that the United States and its allies were only enforcing a
no-fly zone in Libya and to try to take personal credit for destroying the
Libyan regime. And she wonders why other countries do not entirely trust her or
America’s honesty!
There is also no recognition
whatsoever in her book that those who opposed US military action were in fact
right and not “despicable,” to use her phrase about Russian opposition to the
US military intervention in Syria.
Nor has her disastrous record on
Iraq led her to take a more sensible stance toward Iran. On the contrary, in
her anxiety to appear more hawkish than Obama, she has clearly aligned with
those who would make a nuclear deal with Iran impossible and therefore leave
the United States in the ridiculous and unsustainable position of trying to
contain all the major forces in the Middle East simultaneously.
This kind of nationalist faith in
American strength and American righteousness is no longer adequate to the
challenges the country faces. Above all, such a faith makes it impossible to
deal with other nations on a basis of equality—not only on global issues or
those of great interest to Washington, but on issues that other countries
regard as vital to their own interests.
This also makes it far more
difficult for US officials to do what Hans Morgenthau declared is both a
practical and moral duty of statesmen: through close study, to develop a
capacity to put themselves in the shoes of the representatives of other
countries—not in order to agree with them but to understand what is really
important to them, the interests on which they will be able to compromise and
those for which they will feel compelled to fight. Clinton displays not a shred
of this ability in her book.
The greatest future challenge in
this respect is our relations with China. The arrogance with which Washington
treats other countries is at least understandable given that none of them are
or are likely to be equals of the United States—though some, like Russia, can
often compete successfully in their own regions.
China is another matter. If, as now
seems all but certain, its economy soon surpasses that of the United States,
then on issues of interest to Beijing, it will indeed demand to be treated as
an equal—and if Washington fails to do so, it will propel the two sides toward
terrifying confrontations.
In terms of the day-to-day conduct
of relations with Beijing, Clinton had a generally good record as secretary of
state—though in this, she was following what has generally been a restrained
policy by both political parties. But if Clinton’s day-to-day record was
pragmatic, her long-term strategy may prove disastrous. This was the Obama
administration’s decision—in which she was instrumental—to “pivot to Asia.”
As Clinton’s writings make clear,
“pivot” means the containment of China through the enhancement of existing
military alliances in East Asia and the development of new ones (especially
with India).
This strategy is at present
reasonably cautious and somewhat veiled, but if Chinese power continues to
grow, and if collisions between China and some of its neighbors intensify, then
a containment strategy will inevitably become harsher—with potentially
catastrophic consequences.
This is not simply a case of a
knee-jerk US reaction to the rise of a potential peer competitor.
Some of China’s policies have helped
to provoke the new strategy and also enabled it by driving China’s neighbors
into America’s arms. This is above all true of Beijing’s territorial claims to
various groups of uninhabited islands in the East and South China seas.
While some of its claims seem
reasonably well founded, others have no basis in international law and
tradition; and by pushing all of them at once, Beijing has frightened most of
its neighbors and created real fears that in East Asia, at least, its “peaceful
rise” strategy has been abandoned.
But if aspects of China’s strategy
have been aggressive, that does not necessarily make the US response to them
wise—especially since Obama and Clinton’s announcement of the pivot to Asia, at
least in part, preceded the new aggressiveness of Chinese policy.
In particular, Clinton appears to
have forgotten that a key difference between the Cold War with the USSR and the
current relationship with China is that during the Cold War, Washington was
careful never to involve itself in any claims by neighbors on Russian
territory.
In consequence (as I can testify
from my work as a British journalist in the USSR during the years of its
collapse), there was no successful mobilization of Russian nationalism against
the United States. That has come later, when with monumental folly the United
States (under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations) involved itself in
the quarrels of the post-Soviet successor states.
As a senator, Clinton was entirely
complicit in the disastrous strategy of offering NATO membership to Georgia and
Ukraine, which led to the Russo-Georgian war of 2008 (and a de facto US
strategic defeat) and helped set the scene for the Ukraine crisis of this year.
This is not to excuse Russia’s mistaken and criminal reactions to US policy;
but to judge by her book, Clinton never bothered to try to understand or
predict likely Russian reactions—let alone, once again, to acknowledge or learn
from her mistakes.
On the Georgia War, she simply
repeats the lie (which, to be fair, she may actually believe) that this was
deliberately started by Putin and not by Georgia’s president at the time,
Mikheil Saakashvili.
In her policy toward China, Clinton
and the administration in which she served have embroiled the United States in
the islands disputes. Formally, Washington has not taken sides concerning
ownership of the islands.
Informally, though, by emphasizing
the US military alliance with Japan and its extensive character, it has done
so—at least in the case of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. As a result, Clinton may
have helped put her country in a position where it will one day feel compelled
to launch a devastating war to defend Japanese claims to uninhabited rocks, and
at a time dictated by Tokyo.
As the Australian realist scholar
Hugh White has suggested, underlying the other disputes between the United
States and China is Washington’s refusal to accord legitimacy to China’s system
of government, something repeatedly demonstrated in Clinton’s book. White
argues that such recognition is essential if the two countries are to share
power and influence in East Asia and avoid conflict.
This is admittedly a very difficult
moral and political issue, given China’s human-rights abuses. Clinton made
human-rights advocacy a hallmark of her tenure at the State Department
(without, it seems, understanding the disastrous effects on this advocacy of
the US international record).
More substantial has been her
contribution to raising global awareness of women’s rights; and perhaps most
praiseworthy of all (because it is deeply unpopular with many Americans as well
as others around the world) is her staunch defense of gay rights.
It would be an immense help,
however, if American representatives could recognize the degree to which the US
model at home and abroad is now questioned by enemies as well as concerned
friends—at home due to political paralysis and the increasing and obvious
inadequacy of an eighteenth-century Constitution to deal with a
twenty-first-century world; abroad due to a series of criminal actions carried
out in defiance of the international community, as well as the catastrophic
failure of the US war and state-building effort in Iraq—and very likely in
Afghanistan, too. There is not the slightest indication of such a recognition
in Clinton’s book.
When it comes to the Obama administration’s
dysfunctional policy toward Afghanistan, Clinton herself cannot be held chiefly
responsible. As her work and books by others make clear (notably Vali Nasr’s
The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat), this was a policy
driven chiefly by the White House, and for domestic political reasons.
Nonetheless, she can hardly evade all responsibility, since on issues that can
in any way be presented as successes, she is so anxious to claim
responsibility.
At the core of the administration’s
failure (leaving aside the horribly intractable nature of the Afghan War
itself) was the combination of a military surge with the announcement of early
US military withdrawal. As far as hardline Taliban elements were concerned,
this meant they only had to wait. As far as actual or potential moderates were
concerned, Washington failed to accompany the surge with any serious attempt at
a peace settlement.
For this failure, opposition by the
US military and Afghanistan’s then-president, Hamid Karzai, was chiefly
responsible, together with the fear of a political backlash in the United
States. But as Clinton makes clear, there was no way that she would have
supported any peace offer that even the most moderate Taliban elements would
have discussed. In her words, “To be reconciled, insurgents would have to lay
down their arms, reject al Qaeda and accept the Afghan Constitution.” In other
words, not a settlement but surrender.
Such an offer should indeed have
been made by the Bush administration in 2002 and 2003; it probably would have
been accepted by many Taliban commanders, since at the time the Taliban
appeared to have been thoroughly defeated.
That opportunity was missed, and
today—with the United States withdrawing, the Afghan “constitution” deep in
crisis, and the Taliban conquering more and more of the east and south—it will
not even be looked at. And this syndrome, of either pretending or genuinely
believing that Washington is offering compromise when it is actually demanding
surrender, is a leitmotif of Clinton’s work. It is very sensible to make such
offers if you are winning, not so if you are retreating.
This is not to say that, in
Afghanistan or the Middle East, there are easy answers that Clinton has somehow
missed. In both cases, there are no real “solutions,” only better or worse
management of crises based on a choice of lesser evils. Perhaps as president,
Clinton would prove to be a competent manager of these crises; but on the basis
of her record and writings so far, the verdict on this must at best be
“unproven.” So far, her actions and those of the United States have succeeded
only in making things worse.
Can the United States escape the
trap created by its belief in its own supreme morality and right to lead? To do
this would require its leaders to tell the American people a number of things
that a majority of the country’s political classes (which on foreign policy can
generally manage to impersonate the people) really do not want to hear:
· about the relative decline of US power and the need to
adjust both policy and rhetoric to accommodate this development;
· about the consequent need to seek compromises with a number
of countries that Americans have been taught to hate;
· about the insufficiency of the American ideology as a
universal path for the progress of humankind;
· and, most important of all, about the long-term
unsustainability of the US economic model and the absolute need to take action
against climate change.
In an ideal world, an astute
president with popular support should be able to reach past the elites to
appeal to the generally sensible and generous instincts of the majority of
Americans.
As recent polls have demonstrated,
on the question of arming Syrian rebels and of seeking a reasonable compromise
with Iran, large majorities have shown much more cautious and pragmatic
instincts than Clinton, let alone the Republicans. Only 8 percent of Americans
want Washington to attempt to lead the world unilaterally, compared with
overwhelming majorities in favor of seeking cooperation (and cost-sharing) with
other powers.
But as Peter Beinart has shown in a
recent essay in The Atlantic, there is a yawning gap on these issues between
the American public and the political and media elites—and, most crucial of
all, the big donors on whom candidates increasingly depend.
If, as many now believe, the United
States is heading toward a de facto oligarchy, then the views of that oligarchy
on foreign-policy and security issues are clear—and they’re close to those of
Hillary Clinton.
There is certainly little basis for
the belief that she would be prepared to challenge the oligarchy on these
issues. Thus, on the crucial question of climate change, she has indeed taken a
rhetorical stand sharply different from the Republicans and a number of
conservative Democrats.
On the other hand, the chapter on it
in Hard Choices begins with an extended passage in which Clinton crows about a
tactical victory over China at the 2009 Copenhagen summit—a victory that did
nothing to combat climate change and only managed to alienate further the
Chinese, Indians and Brazilians. Clinton’s verbal commitment to this central
issue is impressive and commendable, her actual record much less so.
But again, the real question is
whether any US statesman could do better, given that most Republicans—who now
dominate Congress and control federal legislation on this issue—have managed to
convince themselves that the problem does not even exist. How is it possible to
implement rational policies if much of the political class has abandoned
respect for facts and evidence?
Given the US record of the past
dozen years, there is a great deal to be said in principle for a long period in
which Washington simply pulls back from involvement in international crises.
In practice, though, as several
administrations have found, international affairs will not leave a US president
alone. Crises blow up suddenly, and to craft an appropriate response requires a
consistent philosophy, deep local knowledge, a firm grip on the US
foreign-policy apparatus, and the ability to frame that response in ways that
will gain the necessary support from the policy establishment, media and
population.
These are sufficiently great
challenges in themselves. To expect in addition that a statesman will display
originality, moral courage and a willingness to challenge national shibboleths
is probably too much to ask of anyone.
On the evidence to date, it is
certainly too much to ask of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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